Oh Henry. Yes I had to use that title at least once.

Hello everyone! It's 3 a.m., I may have just successfully put Henry down to sleep on his stomach for the first time and I feel like posting something. Note that Holly has gotten pretty good at the tummy sleep thing over the past couple of days, but my technique seems to be lacking. Note also that part of my staying up to blog reflects my confidence in Henry staying asleep (25%?)

It has been a long month. Transitioning Henry out of his swaddler has been no picnic. Perhaps it's the rose-coloured glasses talking, but I feel like both of the other boys adjusted to freestyle sleeping a lot faster. Then again, Max wasn't even sleeping in his own room at this point (that's crazy to think about - I feel like I've shared a room with Henry overnight fewer than 20 times) and Leo had other issues so it probably all evens out. It's been nice over the past couple of nights to see Henry finally able to get some reasonable sleep outside of his car seat. Did I mention the car seat? Shortly after taking the swaddler off, Henry got a nasty cold. We remembered that the semi-upright position of the car seat helped the other boys get some air overnight so we went right to it for Henry...except that then, we had a very hard time getting him to sleep elsewhere. So it's been about a month of battling for a couple of hours at the start of each night to get Henry to sleep somewhere normal and then, out of desperation, firing him into the car seat to get at least some sleep in before dawn. With the amount of blah blah blah I've done about sleep over the past 4.5 years, it's no shock that parenting magazines always run with at least one sleep story a month on their covers. It certainly provides an excellent crash course in problem solving, patience and persistence though. I just wish I'd gotten more Bs. Or is that Zs?

Other than the nights, Henry continues to be an absolute joy to be around. He is a really expressive baby, always ready to fire a barrage of huge smiles at anyone willing to make googly eyes at him. He is starting to get really grabby so we're having to watch what might be within his reach at all times. He dragged his hand in my bowl of tomato soup at dinner last night! However, this means that if there's a toy or something safe-interesting around him, then he can get it and stick it in his mouth himself. The play gym continues to be a big hit, but the Exersaucer is the big winner these days. Swings are out; tummy time is in. The 3-6 month clothes just got passed on to cousin West this past week (although we're hanging on to the pants for a bit). Sleepers in the daytime aren't the norm anymore. Holly even took Henry to the pool this past week and he apparently loved it. Here's hoping that I can get one Stardom boy through parent and tot lessons without wire-to-wire screaming.

Briefly, the rest of the family is doing very well too. Everyone is finally healthy, the weather has got the kids thinking about biking and parks (who cares what it is, they can get outside for long periods of time again!) and Holly and I are starting to get out of the house once or twice a week for personal rejuvenation. This feels really good to me, but then again the option was always kind of there, given that I'm not the breastfeeder. Now that Henry's pretty reliable with a bottle and seems to be able to go quite a while being happy without a top-up (a great combination, if you ask me) it must feel REALLY GOOD for Holly who has been getting out to the gym occasionally as well as to social events with friends. I'm pretty proud of her - I'm not sure I'd be able to get through those first five months with a smile on my face.

Anyway, I'll save details regarding the other munchkins for another post. In the meantime, here are some Henry pictures. PS Henry's still asleep. Yay!

I wish I could caption this one well - the look on his face is priceless!

Q is for Quilt

Max's kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Noakes, is doing this awesome program with his class where a different letter is featured every week with themed activities, stories, word games, crafts, etc. This week's letter is Q and today, the class made a quilt. Here is an excerpt and a photo from her daily email:

Today we made a quilt with the pictures the childen made yesterday. Mrs. Gordon, a volunteer, showed the children the three parts to making a quilt: the pictures, the batting in the middle and the backing. See attached picture of our quilt:


It's hard to see with the size of the photo here but Max's square is the orange star on the lower right quadrant.

We spent part of the night talking to Max about all of the quilters in our lives like Auntie Krysta, Auntie Karen and Kerry. Super cool!

A little bit of chaos + some Feb recap

Hello all, We're coming up on the end of February and have had some really good times with the kids throughout the month. Things are a little screwy at the moment, though, for a couple of reasons: 1) My back is all spasmy again. Sigh. Eventually I'll take care of this, right? Holly has been a real trooper (again) doing most of the heavy lifting around here (literally) while I work on getting better.

2) Henry has gotten so good at rolling around that he started doing it in the night in his swaddler. Holly and I both quickly decided that this wasn't really safe so we cut the swaddler out cold turkey. Unfortunately, this has had a major impact on Henry's sleep pattern. He's trying to figure things out and this has left us with some pretty unpredictable sleep situations (3 hours, 2 hours, 3 hours; 5 and 3; 2, 2, 2, and 2; 0 until 2 a.m. and then 5 hours straight...we seriously have no idea what to expect on any given night)

Anyway, let's flash back to the start of the month and pop some pictures out here of things that we did a couple of weeks ago.

On Groundhog Day, I took volunteer leave from work and helped out at Max's school for their kindergarten Winter Carnival. I was primarily stationed at the Chateau Woodroffe event - kids were instructed to bring in ice blocks made in as big a container as possible and dyed with food colouring. Kids stacked the blocks up to make a wall and then water sprinkled from a watering can was used to "glue" the whole thing together. The end product was pretty cool and is still standing outside the school today. Here's a picture of Max's class with what half of the morning students were able to accomplish:

On the 3rd, Holly did a little brunch with Auntie Melody, Laramie and West. Here's what Henry wore:

That's our boy - always ready to slay fools with unbridled happiness:) We also took a video later on in the day of Leo and his new favourite hobby - blowing milk bubbles. Here it is.

Three Star(dom)s at the NHL Fan Fair

Ottawa hosted the NHL All-Star Weekend this year so Max, Henry and I decided to take in one of the public events, the Scotiabank NHL Fan Fair. The Fan Fair was a massive, interactive indoor hockey festival held at the newly renovated Ottawa Convention Centre downtown. There were two full floors of booths and activities.

One of the real highlights of the day were the various mascots walking around. We had stopped for a snack and were seated beside the escalators. Mascots were coming up the escalators every few minutes! They were also having a blast hot-dogging down the escalators which the kids loved. After a bit of hesitation, Max got right into it and was high-fiving everyone. I took a few photos:

Max with Wildwing (Anaheim Mighty Ducks)

With Sparky the Dragon (New York Islanders)

With N. J. Devil (New Jersey Devils)

With S.J. Sharkie (San Jose Sharks)

We also saw Thunderbug (Tampa Bay Lightning), Tommyhawk (Chicago Blackhawks), Carlton (Toronto Maple Leafs), and Nordy (Minnesota Wild). The mascots were AMAZING - interacting with kids and adults in goofy ways, posing for creative photos, engaging the shy kids, etc. Sadly, there were no Spartacat sightings.

Another fun feature of the event were various booths where you could get cool photos taken and sent to you via email. Here, we do our best Ron McLean and Don Cherry impressions on a faux Hockey Night in Canada set:

Channel-hopping over to TSN:


With some dress-up clothes in the Scotiabank Photo Booth:

We enjoyed some time in the kids' area with Max playing Timbits hockey and all of us building some hockey-themed Mr. Potato Heads. We didn't line up to get our picture with the Stanley Cup but Max loved seeing it.

Classic Max - Smelling the roses while the hockey action is very clearly going on somewhere else.

Henry reaching out for some Mr. Potato Head love.

Max with the Stanley Cup in the background.

Max at the Sirius DJ booth. Shortly after this, he danced his butt off to the Justin Bieber classic "Baby".
The Fan Fair was absolutely HUGE; I think we saw less than half of it but we were totally spent when we left. I wasn't entirely sure how much Max got out of it at first because it was a really overwhelming experience but he spent a big chunk of time that night telling John about all of the things he did and saw so I know that he enjoyed it. It was definitely a once in a lifetime event for me so it was really special to share it with Max.

Successes on the home front

This is just going to be a quick one, but I want to announce that this past Monday was a big day in the Stardom household. A day after he demonstrated to us that he was capable of rolling over, Henry showed us that he could also roll back. He doesn't quite do it at will yet, but we are definitely not leaving Henry alone on any elevated surface anymore. It was nice to be able to witness the first roll this time, instead of being out of the room and getting burned as our child goes sailing off the couch (sorry Max). The other big success was Max's. Max has been signed up for a lot of activities over the years, but they've all been of the variety that when they're over, you just get a certificate and that's that - there's no real chance to fail. Well, over the past year, he's been in a preschool swimming class that you actually can't get past until you're able to do everything on the report card. Monday night, after his last class, Max graduated to the next level. It's been a lot of hard work - when Max went to his first class, he was unable to be on his back in the pool at all and he was really uncomfortable getting his face wet, let alone putting his face underwater. Now, he can back float to some extent and voluntarily puts his face in the water and is apparently ready to roll for Preschool B. I'm really proud of him and I can't wait to see how he tackles the next challenge.

A Christmas visit

Christmas is funny for kids. This year, Max was on such high alert that the very first time he caught wind of the holiday season approaching (I think it was via a "Santa is coming to Carlingwood Shopping Center" poster in the mall mid-late November), he was all-in on Christmas right from the very start. "When are we getting our calendars?" "Will there be presents?" "I want to make a list for Santa." "Was I a good boy?" etc. As with Halloween, this was going to be Leo's first "absorb it all" Christmas and with Max stoking the fire whenever possible, Leo got pretty amped up. Henry? Well, he was kind of oblivious.

There were some cool firsts that made this Christmas special. First, Max had his first Christmas concert at school. For those of you who don't know about Max's body of work when it comes to performing in public, Max tend to go all shrinking violet and, sure enough, we've got some video evidence to share. Afterward, I asked him about how much singing he did and he was convinced that he was belting out the hits right along with everyone else. On a related note, this was the first year that Max was interested in Christmas carols. Leo really latched on to this and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" became the boys' good night song for weeks.

Most importantly, though, Max, Leo and Henry's Grandma from Winnipeg came to visit! This was possibly the one thing that the two older boys were looking forward to most throughout the month of December. Grandma came late on the 23rd and stayed right through the excitement, until the day after Boxing Day. Now, on the night of the 21st, Leo came down with croup and so we were in the throes of managing his wake-ups the night that Grandma came. Thankfully, Nana covered for us on the airport run and took Grandma back to her place for the night.

The next day, there wasn't much on the slate except for hanging out with Grandma. Lots of playing, reading and snacking. Our annual KFC feast sadly got rescheduled for the week following Christmas as a result of the croup, but we still tucked into some good ol' shepherd's pie.

Grandma helping assemble things from the pirate advent calendar.

Grandma gets some up-close time with Henry.
Christmas morning, the kids were understandably excited. Gifts under the tree. Santa had come and eaten the snack that had been left on the plate. (even the reindeer had chomped the carrots Max had left out). Snow was on the ground outside (it actually only arrived on the 22nd). Everything was in place...FOR PRESENT-OPENING MAYHEM!!!!! Somehow, the kids managed to open their two biggest gifts first this year: a Playmobil pirate ship from Santa and a Playmobil rescue vehicle set from Grandma. Both toys have been playtime staples ever since. What I didn't know about giant Playmobil toys is that they take a while to assemble; the bulk of the following couple of hours were spent putting the 300 or so pieces involved in the two toys together. A big thanks to Steven for pitching in so that the kids could play with the toys before sundown.

Playmobil madness. Not sure what's up with Leo's tongue.

The assembly party.

A Playmobil dude using the rescue set ultrasound machine to check on West.

Nana with the three goofballs.

Bon appetit.
We hosted a nice family breakfast and then, after a breather to collect ourselves, we headed over to Nana's to open the rest of our stockings and tuck into a wonderful Christmas dinner. It was nice to see Leo be a little more respectful of tree ornaments this year - as opposed to last year, when Leo dumped a couple of ornaments in the toilet in Winnipeg; this year, I think I was the only one to break an ornament.

(Sigh) So when is present time again? Waiting is boring.

SHOWTIME!!!! BLLARRARGAHGAHGAHGAA!

Seriously! I can stand still for a second. IMSOEXCITEDIHAVEPRESENTSMUSTOPENMOREMOREMOREMORE!!! OK fine so I can't stand still and this picture will be blurry...where are the presents??!?!

She said that if I put this hat on, I'd get a second helping of breast milk. So where's my Mom anyway?

[imitating Cliff Huxtable imitating Julia Child] First, you slice ever so gently along the grain, following the contour of the bird...

I love this Henry guy. Such a classy...what? Lasers? IN HIS EYES? Stay calm...
Boxing Day and the 27th featured more hanging out and visiting, although we did have one fun jaunt out to T&T Supermarket for dim-sum and treat shopping. The kids always have such a blast there and it was great to poke around with Grandma.
All in all, it was a wonderful visit. Leo fell asleep in the van on the way to the airport so he didn't actually see us drop Grandma off. As a result, he spent the next couple of days wandering around the house looking for her. It was very cute/sad. We're definitely all looking forward to our next visit. Thanks Grandma!

West Robert Frank Walker

He's here! Our very first nephew! Max and Leo's very first cousin on my side! West Robert Frank Walker arrived at 1:04 AM on Wednesday, January 11th, 2012, weighing 7 lbs., 3 oz. to proud parents Laramie and James (a.k.a. Auntie Laramie and Love of Leo's Life). It is entirely possible that this little one is going to be quite the handful if his first journey is any indication - he put my little sister through the ringer with 47 hours of labour! By all accounts, she was an absolute rock star though.

We are all in love. Here are a few photos from West's first day:


Leaving the hospital




The new family of three snuggling at home



My first snuggle with my nephew

Some shots from West's first night at home:






West with his mum, Nana and some of his crazy aunties.
Welcome, West! You were well worth the wait.